There was a time, not long ago, when elite sport demanded sacrifice with little regard for the soul behind the jersey. No nutritionist to flag sudden weight loss. No psychologist to question a dip in confidence. No manager asking how your life outside the white lines was going.
Tony Óg Regan remembers those years well. Now a high-performance coach, he speaks with a measured voice. His words paint a picture of a man who walked through the fire and emerged not just intact, but wiser.
For Regan, the defining lesson wasn’t about medals – it was about balance, burnout, and eventually, belief in a more human approach to high performance.
“I started in 2003 with the Galway seniors, and we had a lot of consistency with the panel and continuity with selection and training routines and ritual,” Regan recalls. “A new management team came in then under Ger Loughnane; our U21s had just won the All-Ireland, and there was a huge degree of freshness.”
Loughnane’s arrival marked a seismic shift. A famously intense figure, the former Clare boss brought a no-holds-barred regime, famously stating that he would walk after two years if he failed in securing the Liam McCarthy Cup for the Tribesmen. Regan describes the early days as a whirlwind.
Players who had been mainstays were suddenly on the fringes”
“The first year he would’ve brought 60-plus lads into a winter training block and then cut that in half,” he says. “It was up and down in selection, and then it was up and down on performances.”
Players who had been mainstays were suddenly on the fringes. Younger lads, fresh off an All-Ireland U21 title, were thrust into a high-pressure environment without the psychological safety nets now commonplace in elite setups.
“There was a lot of change and a lot of instability around selection and trying to form relationships,” Regan says. “It takes a while for trust and stability to build up in the group.”
Balance
Off the pitch, life didn’t slow down either. While trying to secure a permanent spot in the Galway squad, Regan was also grinding through the professional exams required to become a chartered accountant.
“During that period, I was training to be a chartered accountant on top of my 40-hour workweek. We were training in different centres around Galway and Clare; often you wouldn’t be getting on the pitch until 8pm, then training until half ten, three or four nights per week.”
“It was a long slog with the training load, and after that two-year period, I was burning out. I picked up a lot of muscle injuries. I lost two stone in weight. We just thought you had to train like a dog to win All-Irelands, even if it wasn’t to the best of our own health and performance levels.”
In time, the cracks widened. His performance dipped. Injuries mounted. Confidence vanished. Eventually, Regan found himself dropped from the Galway panel at just 24 – a devastating blow for someone who had poured everything into the game.
“That was a really challenging point in my career, and I lost form and a lot of confidence. In time it led to me failing exams and becoming unemployed.”
“It started a vicious cycle because I’d be exhausted going to training and then exhausted at work, and subsequently my performance dipped. A by-product then was failing exams and being dropped off the squad.”
What he needed was someone to stop him – to say enough is enough.
He regrouped, requalified, and clawed his way back into the Galway panel”
“In hindsight I would’ve loved if someone told me to sit out the odd session – ‘You’re losing weight; take the week off and get yourself right. How is everything going from a study or life perspective?”
That voice never came. But Regan didn’t quit. He regrouped, requalified, and clawed his way back into the Galway panel. He would go on to play in three All-Ireland Finals, including the 2012 replay heartbreak against Kilkenny. At 28, he made a major life pivot – away from accounting and toward performance psychology.
“I realised that accounting wasn’t something that I wanted to do forever,” he says. “I worked through the GPA and identified a career in life coaching along with my passions and strengths.”
Lessons
Today, Regan is one of the most respected high-performance coaches in the country, working with athletes, businesses, and club and county teams to help individuals reach their potential – without losing themselves in the process.
“I like to work with people in terms of emotional intelligence and leadership; I run a number of programs around that. I also have an athlete program called, where we do group sessions surrounding performance psychology.”
Crucially, it’s not about pushing people harder – it’s about helping them understand when to pull back, recover, and reset. That ethos is grounded in his own painful experiences.
“The role of a sports psychologist is to identify those warning signs and help put structures around them to help people cope in a healthy way in the demanding parts of sport and life.”
That more human approach is now the cornerstone of every modern GAA setup.
“For any successful team, you need a high level of trust and consistency,” Regan says. “Players need to feel safe to be themselves and share their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. You shouldn’t feel like a number who can be cut at any stage. There’s a more personalised approach now, and there’s a better balance.”
Compare that to the culture of constant fear and performance anxiety he came up through.
Well-being is not a luxury; it’s the foundation of real success”
“Management teams in my period – if you got to two years in Galway, they were doing well, and a third year never happened unless you won the All-Ireland,” he reflects. “There wasn’t that long-term approach, so that trust is hard to build, and as a result players and management were in a constant state of pressure, stress and worry as opposed to high performance.”
It’s a message Regan now brings across Ireland – that well-being is not a luxury; it’s the foundation of real success. And it’s at the core of his book – MVP.
“I wanted to capture the last 10 or 15 years – that journey from being an accountant to who I am now – and some of the key lessons and mindsets that I’ve taken from it to try to help people be more successful and achieve growth in terms of their own health and wellbeing.”
“I think in any walk of life, everyone can use help in getting the very best out of themselves.”
